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Aug. 25, 2008

Wired.com just completed a survey that suggests Apple's iPhone slow throughput speeds and/or the many reported problems of no reception at all are caused by the wireless carrier's network not being optimized for 3G, rather than problems with the iPhone itself.

That is pretty much the bottom line answer that Wired.com’s Gadget Lab drew from a survey of about 4,200 unhappy iPhone 3G owners.

Posted just this morning, the survey reveals some marked regional differences that Wired.com believes are primarily due to the maturity (or lack thereof) of local 3G networks, and not some underlying problems in the iPhone's hardware or software.

The graph on the left offers a pretty good idea of the performance (or lack thereof) that was plotted in various parts of the United States.

The study was less than scientific... The participants were self-selected and a third of them provided data so incomplete that the information was unusable. But Wired.com did its best at producing results that were as good as possible.

However, of the 2,636 data points that were usable, some offer a fairly accurate window into the nature of the iPhone bandwidth problem that has drawn so many complaints.

As could have been largely expected, the most notable differences in 3G reception emerged when the study compared the U.S. with Europe.

With all else being equal, on average, Europe is light years ahead of the U.S. in terms of 3G technology.

Users in Germany and the Netherlands reported the world’s fastest average 3G download speeds — at about 2 Mbps. The most "0" results — indicating no 3G signal whatsoever — came from users in the United States.

Other results from the survey included:

European T-Mobile users reported the fastest 3G download speeds at 1.822 Mbps on average. Europe has some of the most mature 3G networks, which have been in development since 2001. By contrast, AT&T introduced its 3G network in the U.S. just four years ago.

Canadian carriers Rogers and Fido tied for second fastest with an average download speed of about 1.33 Mbps on average.

U.S. wireless carrier AT&T tied for third with Telstra in Australia, Telia in Sweden and Softbank in Japan, where users reported average download speeds of roughly 990 Kbps.

Overall, Australian carriers Optus and Virgin users reported the slowest speeds of about 390 Kbps on average.

The Wired.com survey also shows contrasting differences from one neighborhood to another. For instance, Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center and upper Fifth Ave. got very strong signals, while coverage in the rest of New York City was extremely spotty at best.

Reception in a Brooklyn neighborhood was reported to be particularly weak, which correlates with first-hand experience from one of the persons at Wired.com responsible for the survey.

One explanation for the poor bandwidth in metropolitan areas like "the Big Apple" and San Francisco is offered by Dave Nowicki, developer of the femtocell, a technology that extends the reach of wireless networks. He suggests that although these cities are richly supplied with 3G antennas, they are also the places where the most iPhone users reside, resulting in overloaded networks and thus weak bandwidth.

This is a problem, Wired.com concludes, that won’t be easy for Apple to fix: "in our view, this data is a strong indicator that performance of the mobile carrier’s network is affecting the iPhone 3G more than the handset itself."

"This also furthers our thesis that it’s highly unlikely that Apple is going to wave a magical wand and say, “3G problems, be gone,” with a software update. Before Apple can make such a claim, it needs to wait for all of its wireless carriers to optimize 3G network behavior — in terms of number of towers, how they’re positioned and how much bandwidth each tower can handle.

On August 22, Jessica Smith actually sued Apple for her numerous problems with her iPhone. Smith is seeking a court order forcing Apple to repair or replace any parts that aren’t working as advertised, plus unspecified monetary damages.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0.

Source: Wired.com.